A Night Removed
by Memic
Summary: Bo and Lauren are a normal couple in a normal world - well, for one (much deserved) night, they're going to try to be. S4 (post La Fae Epoque, pre Rayner but other than that I'm not being a stickler for chronology - it's Valentines!) May be a part 2 but this whole story was very spur of the moment(written yesterday)and I'm not happy with the rest of the draft yet. Cheers to love!
1. Chapter 1

She locates the blonde at the bar immediately, feels the undeniable pull on all her senses even across the busy restaurant clustered with couples covering a whole spectrum of desire. Her beauty is a beacon, even from behind, but it's more than that; her strength, her… appeal runs to depths uncharted. Amidst a patchwork of flickering flames, raging passion and blushed cheeks, the blonde burns brightest. Hottest. She's the one.

Blood races, hot and hard, pooling promises of pleasure throughout her body. She feels the urge to growl rumbling in her throat and catches it just in time. She should turn away; give herself a few seconds to level out and fully regain control. But to deny the animal would only deny her too. And she just doesn't have the will for that. Instead, she removes the tight leather jacket to let her skin breathe and her expanding chest keep up with her heart rate under reduced constraint. More than anything, ever before, she wants this to play out perfectly. She needs to prove that it can, and for that to happen, she has to bench her beast.

She tries to focus on the gentle underlying hum of live piano that drifts around and across the tables of two and their intimate chatter. Her eyes had passed over the ebony Baby Grand on their route to the bar; a flicker of appreciation for the detail before her focus was wholly rapt. She'd thought this place to be a random choice but the near perfection for purpose could not simply be happy accident. How much more had she planned? The wanton lust surges once more at the thought. It doesn't help that the blonde's aura has responded to her presence without her even turning around. She smiles, swallowing down the butterflies that suddenly flutter from stomach to throat; a reaction to the blonde's reaction; to finding each other without even looking. She marvels at the paradox, the contradictory nature of her entire being in the face of this intangible force.

They're never going to pull this off.

She begins to make her way around the edge of the room, avoiding the more direct route in order to prolong the time she has to watch from a distance. The blonde is truly stunning. Her hair is loose but swept over one shoulder so that the fine cut of her profile is entirely visible. Her eyes and mouth are delicately made up in natural hues though she really needs no make-up at all. The dress is new. Burgundy, high-necked and cut out at the back, exposing a run of delectable bare skin to rival the long, lean legs tightly crossed one over the other.

Subconsciously, she pulls her bottom lip between her teeth and needlessly smoothes her own black silk dress down and around her curves. Hers is new too; they've both gone all in for this. She almost laughs at the flare in the blonde's flow as her libido rockets and she shifts in her seat, trying to remain composed. Her fingers play with the stem of a near empty wine glass, and as the other woman's levels heighten at the sight of her soft, skilful hands, she shivers, finally turning to greet her with a look of playful chastising.

She slinks the last few steps and slides onto the stool directly next to her, draping the leather jacket across her lap with a teasing smile when she notices her date's eyes are drawn immediately to the thigh-skimming hem of her dress. She offers her hand to the blonde, pushing herself back into character and the spirit of the evening, remembering their reason for being here; for choosing an unfamiliar restaurant in an unfamiliar town almost two hours drive away from all they know.

'Hi, I'm Bo.'

The blonde raises an eyebrow in question, one side of her mouth following in a whimsical half-smile.

'Just go with it.' Bo winks, twirling ninety degrees on the bar stool to fully face her.

'Lauren.' She gently takes Bo's hand but doesn't shake it – that wouldn't seem right even in this slightly adapted version of the plan. 'Nice to meet you.'

The fingers of their right hands remain touching, somehow become entwined, resting on top of the bar and each threatening to pull the other in closer. Their eyes are locked, mirrors of intense struggle against the ease with which this whole masquerade could be undone. That tug, that temptation to just give in to base instinct and the welcoming comfort of immediate gratification.

They'd both wanted this; to do it properly. To have – even if just for one night – everything that's been lost, taken, threatened or destroyed. To have it all in spite of it all; a stolen moment of oblivious calm in the centre of their fiercely stormy world. But it's so hard to ignore three whole years, to pretend that they're not the accumulation of everything they've experienced. So hard to go back to a start that has always been out of reach to them, when they are – right now – close enough to touch. When they are touching.

They're beginning to draw attention, or more accurately, more attention; Bo is confident enough in the allure of her own body to acknowledge there'd been eyes on her when she entered. And only an Albaster could deny Lauren's ample charms. Especially tonight. She's radiant, almost blindingly so now they're in such proximity. And though they're not the only female-female couple, Bo knows without looking that they're generating the most heat. One of them needs to make a move here, and not the kind they usually would, in their world, their time, where everything has a sense of urgency, of slipping away as soon as it's grasped.

A young, impeccably turned out – even in standard issue employee black and grey – waiter tentatively approaches, clearing his throat apologetically at the intrusion.

'Ladies, your table is ready, and the wine you requested has been delivered. My name is Tim and I'll be your waiter this evening. If you'd like to come this way?'

Without relinquishing their physical, tactile hold, they stand - Lauren thanking the slightly embarrassed youth while Bo distractedly adjusts the hem of her dress, grinning at the blonde in delight. Lauren can still feel Bo's eyes and smile on her as she falls into step directly behind the waiter, clasping their joined hands in the small of her back.

'Stop smiling like that, you look high and this is a fancy restaurant,' she mocks.

Bo ghosts her free hand down Lauren's arm, slowing her enough to lean in and whisper, 'You make me feel high. This dress...' The roving hand passes over Lauren's hip, intent on continuing its downward exploration.

'Not too much for a first date?' Lauren doesn't wait for a response; she quickens her step a little, not letting go but trailing Bo's arm behind her, swaying her hips slightly as she rounds the final table before their own.

Bo pauses, the sudden cease in motion disengaging their hold as a multitude of wholly inappropriate scenarios and comments fight for prominence in her mind.

'Oh honey,' she murmurs. 'Nothing you do tonight could possibly be too much.'

When they're seated and the waiter has reeled off the specials – to mostly un-listening ears – and left them to peruse the menu, suddenly neither of them is sure how to proceed. Bo wants to touch her again, to hold her hand, run fingers encouragingly along the bare stretch of her arms as they finally have the long talked about talk. Her succubus wants to ravage her right here on the table. Lauren's natural instinct is practicality; use the time to problem-solve the present, fix the future. That or drag Bo right out of here and into the nearest bed. Or remotely less populated space.

Lauren picks up the bottle of wine she'd requested, takes time appreciating the label. Though she's no expert, she recognises the regal emblem from a time she could barely reach the table and the memory coaxes her gently forward. Already opened to breathe, she sniffs delicately, savouring the heady aroma – a distraction from the enthralling scent of Bo and the more than welcome sensation of it mingling with her own – before pouring them each a glass. Her smooth ritualistic actions have a calming effect on them both, seals them back in their temporary bubble.

Bo raises her glass to clink against Lauren's, tilting her head in thanks.

'To… a night removed.'

'A night removed.'

They sip through similar smiling lips; the desire to once again reach for a physical connection playing out as finger-taps against the bodies of their glasses. Lauren looks down at her menu to avoid the inelegance of draining such an exquisite wine, but her date isn't ready to turn away. She watches the blonde, noting and memorising every intricate nuance of her features, as though she doesn't know them already, as though this is all new. Which, in so many ways it is. A contented sigh enters the space between them before she has time to consider it. She's…happy. Perhaps a little too happy given all that's occurring outside of this room.

'What?' Lauren's left eyebrow is lifted in concern and it only serves to make her all the more endearing, all the more loveable.

Bo is utterly – for want of a better word – smitten. In this woman's presence, she's complete, contained, and it shouldn't be this easy but it is. Everything else can – and as far as she'll allow it, does – fade. In this moment, as with many before, she'd sacrifice everything, leave everyone behind. For her.

'Bo? What is it?'

'I…' She forces herself to stop.

Tonight is meant to be different; there isn't supposed to be anything to fade. They're a normal couple on a normal date, concerned only with normal things. There's no Una Mens or Wanderer or helskor or memory loss, or friend, foe, family or Fae bullshit. There is just this. Just them.

'Order for me?'

Lauren chuckles at the heady thickness in Bo's voice, a held breath escaping through her nose in relief.

'Why?'

'Because…' Screw it, she needs to touch her. She reaches across the table - between the lit candle and thin vase containing a single red rose - and places her hand over her lover's. 'It's so damn sexy when you take charge.'

So Lauren orders and Bo watches, teasing the top of her foot along the curve of Lauren's calf beneath the table and earning herself a spiked heel to the groin as sanction. They eat and they feed with bare hands, a familiar intimacy so readily transferred from times hidden behind closed doors that neither makes the association. They talk not of mistakes or battles or regret, but of childhood hopes and embarrassments, the people and places and food and music that had brought them to the point at which – for now at least – they had to make believe it all stopped. Because if it started, the bubble burst.

The meal is delicious, the shared dessert not quite what either of them really want, and as Bo feels the last sliver of dark chocolate drizzle melt on her tongue, she finds it impossible not to request something more.

'Sing for me?'

'What? I can't…' She sees the truth reflected in Bo's eyes, wants to ask how she knows but senses the answer will betray them.

'Please, Lauren.'

And so she sits at the piano, fingers tenderly skimming the surface of worn keys, pretending to consider what she'll play. She adjusts the mic subtly to ensure her line of sight remains unbroken, that the vision from which she's channelling the strength to do this is undisturbed, and then she begins.

'_Lay your life on mine, and I'll carry you through…_'

As Lauren's tongue lifts to tease out the 'L' before sliding slowly, seamlessly down the remainder of the syllable, drawing her lips closed, everything ends. All over again. Just like Bo knew it would.

'_For the cost is too high not to love._'


	2. Chapter 2: A Morning Removed

Bo's awakened by warm fingers trailing cool shivers up and down her spine, and before she even opens her eyes she can feel the winter sun streaming through the open blinds and her whole body is gloriously spent but equally alive.

'Mmm.' She twists herself into Lauren's embrace, nuzzling into the space between her shoulder and propped up head. 'I can't believe you're awake already; I must be losing my touch.'

'Babe it's almost midday. And maybe I just learned a few things.'

'Oh I won't argue with that. What time did we go to sleep?' Bo coasts a hand up Lauren's back as she half-heartedly raises her head in search of a clock – a failed quest that leads her to slump quite happily back into waiting arms. She presses her lips into the salty skin of Lauren's neck, inhaling her scent and murmuring incoherently.

'I'm not sure, but I remember thinking 'she can't possibly want to go again' around the time the sun came up…and then you did that thing with your tongue…'

'Excuse me, as I recall…' Bo's teeth nip playfully beneath Lauren's jaw. 'You requested I do that thing with my tongue…repeatedly. You were really going for gold last night.' Her thumb lazily strokes the path her mouth took before dropping dramatically in the miniscule space left between them. 'And this morning, I guess. God woman, how are you awake!'

Lauren's smiles, tightening her hold on her tamed succubus, wrapping a leg around her waist to cocoon her completely and delighting in the way Bo tucks to fit her even closer. Truthfully, she's exhausted, but blissfully so. And she didn't want to waste the few hours they have left in this removed reality sleeping. As much as Bo is hers – only and entirely – right now, she's all too aware that soon, she'll have to give her back.

'I have something for you.'

'Does it involve movement of any kind?' Bo groans.

'Minimal.'

'That's too much.' She flexes the short nails of her right hand against Lauren's shoulder blade in protest at the mere suggestion.

Lauren chuckles, rolling her skin into Bo's touch, enjoying the contrast of the slight scratch against the smoothness of their conjoined bodies.

'Well I'd intended to give it to you last night but you were pretty insistent that I gave you something else and it proved to be quite the distraction.'

She lightly tickles the curve of Bo's hip, evoking a tired cry of 'Babe!' and a pitifully weak attempt to halt her hand before she sneaks it around back for a playful squeeze.

'You know, I half wish I'd broken our agreement and brought my phone. Out-sexing a succubus is quite the achievement, surely a bona fide, documentable, Instagram moment.'

Bo retaliates by gently pulsing her back, relishing the soft surprised moan it elicits.

'Photos? Kinky,' she teases.

'Do you want your present or not?'

'What degree of movement are we talking about here? If it's beyond this bed then – at the risk of sounding ungrateful – no.'

Lauren brushes her lips against Bo's temple, humming in faux consideration, tempted by Bo's slow soporific caresses to forget the idea completely and just remain entangled like this. But they really don't have long left.

'I'm pretty sure a roll and reach will do.'

'Fine,' Bo relents, sighing in mock petulance. 'On the count of three…'

Lauren laughs, pressing another, firmer kiss into the brunette's hairline as she drawls the numbers.

'…Three.'

They simultaneously roll away, one arm each maintaining contact whilst the other extends beyond the confines of the bed; Lauren's to the small cabinet on her side, Bo's to the pocket of her discarded leather jacket. They return to their centre as one, lips bumping semi-intentionally and their wrists encircling tightly between them as though their parcels are champagne flutes. Bo feels the familiar silky solidity of a box she's held before and with a sudden rush of cautious excitement, she opens her eyes to accept it as Lauren nods for her to go first.

It's the same note, same beautiful necklace that she'd discovered and desired and not dared to take from Lauren's desk drawer all those weeks ago when Lauren was still missing. The necklace she'd imbued with such hope once Lauren had returned, only to have it shattered every day that she was forced to pretend she didn't know of it's existence. She lightly fingers the pendant, exploring the rise and fall, turning it beneath her thumb to find the sunlight splitting through the curves. Lifting the chain over her head, she brings the weight to rest between her breasts and looks up at Lauren with liquid eyes, unable to speak.

'It's Ganymede,' Lauren offers. 'The largest moon in our solar system, named after Zeus' human lover, said to be the most beautiful of mortals.' Her voice catches as she places a hand over Bo's, still clutching the pendant. 'It has two distinct terrains; the lesser, dark, cavernous side, and the larger areas of light.' She moves her mouth against Bo's cheek, placing a delicate kiss on freshly damp skin. 'Before my time…away, I treated this Fae artist who does amazing things with crystal and glass. She replicated the mapping of Ganymede, created this by hand, one of a kind.'

'It's beautiful,' Bo rasps, grasping at Lauren's hair, pulling her in for a kiss that couldn't possibly hope to convey all that she's feeling but is the best way she knows how to try.

Lauren succumbs, allows herself to be lost in her love for a few moments before compelling herself to continue what she's started. She needs Bo to know this.

'The pendant wasn't for sale, Isla – the artist – took some convincing to part with it.'

'Well I happen to know you can be pretty persuasive,' Bo whispers, curling a stray lock of blonde from Lauren's face, her fingers lingering to stroke behind her ear.

'Actually it was you who swayed her. Well, what I told her about you…maybe some stories she'd already heard, but I think mostly mine.' She grins mischievously at Bo's puzzled expression. 'What? Don't play coy, you know you're renowned, Miss Formerly Unaligned,' she teases. 'And she was my patient for a long – uhhhuh.' Lauren bucks beneath Bo's gently pulsing hand, eyes narrowing at her smug smile.

'Finish the story, Chatty Cathy. What made her give up the pendant?'

'Well, you see, in another life – and I mean that literally, she's a Phoenix – she was a physicist, an astronomer, and a passionate one at that. The moons of Jupiter were her obsession, their workings her own life's work for several cycles. She was part of a team that identified Ganymede's gravitational influence on Jupiter's other satellites, on that of her smaller moon, Lo…'

Bo stares into her eyes, incredulous, a swell of new emotion threatening to break against her ribs as Lauren continues.

'The relationship between them is symbiotic, inextricable…' She holds Bo's gaze, hoping she understands because now that she's got to the serious part she's suddenly unable to go on.

'It's perfect,' is all Bo can manage, tracing her thumb slowly down the curve of Lauren's neck to retrieve her own offering from the tangle of bed sheets beneath them. 'Your turn.'

She places the satin pouch into Lauren's palm, lifting her lover's hand to dot small kisses across her knuckles. She can't watch as Lauren loosens the tiny drawstrings, suddenly so nervous that her gift won't possibly measure up, and doubting her decision to forgo jewellery through fear of the connotations of ownership that she so detests and resents that perhaps she'd projected them and got this all so completely wrong and.…. She closes her eyes against the barrage of uncertainty, focused on the pressure of the held breath in her chest until she hears the heavy release of Lauren's.

'Bo…' Lauren has the strip of black velvet lifted and scissored between her fingers, the white gold charms on either end dropped down to glisten against her wrist.

'It's supposed to be a bookmark,' Bo hurriedly begins before forcing herself to slow down. 'The anchor was my Grandmother's; she gave it to Trick as a symbol of her commitment, to him and to the life that they'd begun to lay out together in a time when things were so unsettled. And now it represents…well, you. You are my tether to the world; whenever I'm at risk of becoming that lost girl again, the person I was before I met you, you always guide me back; you're my way home.'

Lauren's eyes are thick with barely restrained tears and trained so intensely on Bo's now that she feels as though she's reading her thoughts rather than hearing them.

'And the L…' she falters, the desperate desire to communicate every single thing they've left unsaid for too long - in stolen time she's all too aware is running out – causing her to choke on the build up of words.

'I think I know what the L is, babe.' Lauren's smile is tainted with sadness and suddenly Bo's resolve is restored.

'Do you?' She pulls her in closer, releasing her grasp on the Ganymede pendant to cup Lauren's cheek, covering the path of her tears. 'Lauren Lewis, you are my light, my love, my life. I was so lost for so long but I started living again the moment that you found me. When we have to leave here – and neither of us would be the people that we've fallen so profoundly in love with if we didn't leave, if we didn't go back to stand and fight, if we didn't make that sacrifice – just know that no matter what happens, no matter how long it takes, I will always look for you. I will always love you.'

Lauren wraps her beautiful, brave, weeping succubus up as well as she's able, planting kisses in her hair and on every piece of reachable skin. She casts a glance at the clock above the door behind her love, accepting that for them there is never enough time, and grateful still for what they do have. She lifts Bo's chin, seals their fate with a crush of lips. They have so much to face but for a few more minutes the world can wait.

'Happy Valentine's Day, baby.'


End file.
